There are many different kinds of food loaves; they come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Meat loaves are made from various different meats, including ham, pork, beef, lamb, turkey, fish, and others. The meat may be in large pieces or may be thoroughly comminuted. Meat loaves come in different shapes (round, square, rectangular, oval, etc.) and in different lengths, up to six feet (180 cm) or even longer. The cross-sectional sizes of the loaves can be quite different; the maximum transverse dimension may be as small as one and one-half inches (four cm) or as large as ten inches (twenty-five cm). Loaves of cheese or other foods come in the same ranges as to composition, shape, length, and transverse size.
Many food loaves meet a common fate; they are sliced, the slices are grouped in accordance with a particular weight requirement and then packaged and sold. The number of slices in a group may vary, depending on the size and consistency of the food loaf and on the desires of the producer, the wholesaler, or the retailer. For some products, neatly aligned stacked slice groups are preferred. For others, slice groups should be shingled so that a purchaser can see a part of every slice. For bacon or other food products of variable shape, the problems do not just increase; they literally multiply.
There are a variety of different known slicing machines for food loaves. They range from small, manually fed slicers used in butcher shops to large, high speed slicers usually employed in meat processing plants. The present invention is directed to a continuous food loaf feed mechanism for a high speed slicing machine of the kind used in a meat processing plant.
Some known high speed food loaf slicing machines have sliced two food loaves simultaneously with a single, cyclically driven knife blade. Other prior high speed slicing machines, including that shown in S. Lindee et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,428,263, slice one loaf at a time, but could be expanded to slice two or more loaves simultaneously. None of the prior high speed slicing machines have had the versatility needed to slice food loaves of the many different sizes and shapes referred to above, particularly with provision for either stacking or shingling of the sliced output, variations in slice thickness from two or more different loaves, and precision control of the weight of slice groups.